The blog of the 'There is a Better Way' campaign by STUC staff about policy issues that are, or should be, in the news and guest contributors on issues of social justice. Written from a STUC perspective, contributions will often cover areas where there is yet no settled STUC policy and go into areas in more detail than our formal decisions. We welcome debate and we don’t expect everyone to agree with us, but we will remove any comments that are offensive, irrelevant or otherwise annoy.

Thursday, 6 October 2016

The STUC Women’s
Committee has campaigned for years for family friendly workplaces. We all know the
crucial role carers in Scotland play in the labour force. The majority of
these carers are women so it’s a subject that is very dear to the hearts of the
women we represent.

Despite the legislation there are still very few employers embracing the
principle of family friendly working. Too many simply pay lip service to it
whilst actively discouraging flexible working requests and providing a variety
of spurious reasons to decline them.

This affects our performance in the workplace, the opportunities
available to us for promotion, our health and wellbeing and most of all our
family life. That’s why it’s one of the many topics we’ll be debating at the
STUC Women’s Conference in Perth at the end of October.

We are therefore delighted to be working with
Family Friendly Working Scotland (FFWS) on tackling the many barriers women in
particular face in the pursuit of a work-life balance.

Family Friendly Working Scotland was set up in
2014 with funding and support from the Scottish Government. As part of National
Work Life Week, FFWS are holding a conference in Glasgow on Thursday 6 October
which the STUC Women’s Committee fully supports. I will be attending with a
colleague from the Women’s Committee, Joyce Stephenson from CWU.

The event is an opportunity to discuss the many different aspects of
family friendly working and the benefits they bring. It also covers practical
ideas for employers to take this forward in their organisations, how the
different policies work in practice and how FFWS can help support employers to
make Scotland a family friendly place to work.

The STUC Women’s
Committee and FFWS aim to follow this up with a joint event which looks at flexible working approaches for non-standard
working patterns. We will keep you updated on how this is progressing and hope
that as many trade union women as possible can attend this event.

About Me

The STUC is Scotland's Trade Union centre.
Our purpose is to co-ordinate, develop and articulate the views and policies of the trade union movement in Scotland and, through the creation of real social partnership, to promote: trade unionism; equality and social justice; the creation and maintenance of high quality jobs; and the public sector delivery of services.
The STUC represents over 596,000 trade unionists, the members of 37 affiliated trade unions and 22 Trades Union Councils. We speak for trade union members in and out of work, in the community and in the workplace, in all occupational sectors and across Scotland. Our representative structures ensure that we can speak with authority for the interests of women workers, black workers, young workers and other groups of trade unionists that otherwise suffer discrimination in the workplace and in society.